When was the last time you consciously practiced self-analysis? Although Freud made analytic thought famous, self-analysis has been practiced and documented for thousands of years. In ancient times, it was viewed as confession or cleansing of the soul. Even today, many Catholics still practice the ancient ritual of confession as a method of spiritual cleansing. However, you don’t need a priest to examine your own mind and cleanse your subconscious.

Why is Self-analysis Important?Understanding yourself allows you to positively direct your life, find peace, and develop better relationships with others. With the regular practice of self-assessment, you will experience peace of mind and when challenges or conflicts do arise, you will be better equipped to resolve them in a healthy manner.

In order to analyze yourself, you need to understand how psychoanalysts view the mind. The basic idea behind the analytic method is that everything you say and do is motivated by your subconscious; your internal self influences your external behavior. Repression refers to ignoring or avoiding internal conflicts rather than immediately dealing with them. Dispersion, on the other hand, refers to the process of bringing repressed ideas and conflicts to the surface in order to resolve them.

Five Steps to Self-Assessment

Step 1: Be honest.This will probably be the most difficult step. You have worked your whole life to create the person that you want to be and in the process, those thoughts and behaviors that you don’t want to accept have been repressed. Honestly evaluating how you have handled past situations and relationships is the first step to finding peace and balance in your life.

Step 2: Search for unresolved conflict.Most likely, various events and situations during your lifetime have created conflicts. In some instances, you probably handled the conflicts well and they were resolved productively. Other battles, however, may have been left unresolved and festering in your subconscious. For example, you may be suffering from feelings of guilt because you once accused your mother of not loving you. Your mother has now passed away, so you feel as though you are unable to fix the problem. This is not true. With time and effort, you can work through the situational guilt without your mother present. By spending some time meditating on the problem, you can come to the realization that not only did your mother love you, she also loved you enough to understand that one statement did not change the relationship. As well, you can learn through the process that failing to forgive yourself in no way alleviates the problem and only creates further distress. By making a list of unresolved conflicts, you can handle them individually over time and clear your subconscious. Some areas of unresolved conflicts include:

-Issues with parents or siblings

-Relationships that have ended badly or abruptly, both friendships and romantic interests

-Spiritual conflicts (often related to blaming the church or God for your life situations).

Step 3: Determine if negative emotions are motivating you.Are you motivated by anger, guilt, or jealously? Do you fly into an angry rage when you don’t get what you want or feel wronged? Are you constantly worrying about making someone unhappy or do you become obsessed about perceived past wrongs? Do you find relationships difficult because you can’t trust others and regularly find reasons to feel jealous? If any of these emotions are motivating your actions, then they need to be dispersed. Typically, such emotions will prevent you from having peace and balance in your life. Looking at the list of unresolved conflicts that you made in Step 2, note any emotions that are attached to those conflicts.

Step 4: Don’t blame others.In your self-assessment, remember that the goal is for you to be healthier and happier. If you look at the list of unresolved conflicts and find yourself still blaming others, you need to get over it. Blame does not solve problems, it only labels them. Often, people think that if they can lay blame, it absolves them from the conflict. Ironically, you will find that no matter who is to blame, simply being part of the conflict affects your subconscious. Think of blame as a trap that will prevent you from healing.

Step 5: Actively work to create a plan to solve the inner conflict.Creating a specific plan will help you take control of the situation and your emotions.

Repression allows the problems to continue to grow even if you have identified them. Active work brings about dispersion with the problems rising to the surface and being resolved. Some ways that you can actively work through your inner conflicts are:

Talking it out – even if you can’t communicate with others involved in the situation, you can talk through it with a supportive friend or relative. This is an area where the blame mentality will tempt you most, particularly if you feel you have been wronged. Before discussing the issue, let your listener know the purpose of the discussion: that you want to resolve some internal issues and ask the listener to stop you if the talk becomes a complaint session. You will only feel worse if all you have accomplished is re-establishing why the conflict took place. Remember that your goal is dispersion, cleansing and closure.

Change your behavior – if the conflict is related to a specific repeated behavior, such as using emotional manipulation to get your way, make a conscious effort to stop the behavior. Do not expect to conquer negative behavior immediately, but view it as a process and reward yourself each time you overcome it. If you have a trusted friend to monitor and signal you when the behavior starts, it can be very helpful.

Meditate regularly - regular quiet time spent relaxing and evaluating your own thoughts and actions not only helps with past conflict resolution, but also helps prevent future issues.

Journaling and letter writing – getting ideas out of your head and on paper is an excellent form of dispersion. Writing letters to those involved in the conflicts can also be useful, even if the letters are never sent. Letter writing provides an opportunity for you to cleanse your mind of what is weighing on you and share exactly how you feel. Be cautious about sending such letters unless you feel certain that receipt of the letter will truly help resolve the conflict. Otherwise, you may just end up creating new problems.

By following the above steps, you can do your own self-assessment and learn to actively cleanse your subconscious regularly. Honestly evaluating your own mind will bring inner conflicts and situations to the surface, allowing you the opportunity to resolve them. Acting on that opportunity will bring peace of mind and balance to your life.

Do You Know The Dark Side Of Your Personality?

We all know those people who have to be the center of attention. Or maybe you have that friend or family member who is always suffering from the newest ailment. Take this quiz and learn about personality disorders, but keep in mind that we all exhibit characteristics like these once in awhile. Could you fall into one of the three personality disorder categories?